


i'd surely lose myself.

by rems



Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: joel is in fact dead in this 1 even if im mad abt it, mild descriptions of gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:33:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28304601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rems/pseuds/rems
Summary: It's Joel. He's got a frown on his face, set deep in the weathered lines around his mouth as he focuses on restringing a guitar. She wants to look away, nausea building in her gut, dread bringing her heart into her throat. It's not real, she thinks- knows. He's dead and she'd watched it.But when he glances over to her, doing a double take at the troubled look on her face, she finds she's stuck, distant sounds of his pain like a broken record in her mind.
Relationships: Ellie & Joel (The Last of Us)
Kudos: 15





	i'd surely lose myself.

She settles into the cracked tile of the theater floor, bundling up in her coat and reeking of sweat and rain and dirt. She punches her backpack onto a shape she can rest her head on and does her best to drift off to sleep.

The first thing she notices is the light. It's bright and gold where its just due to set behind the treeline. She can smell warm coffee and familiarity. She tenses, head swimming as a flash of metal swinging down shoots across her vision before she turns her head to the side.

It's Joel. He's got a frown on his face, set deep in the weathered lines around his mouth as he focuses on restringing a guitar. She wants to look away, nausea building in her gut, dread bringing her heart into her throat. It's not real, she thinks- _knows_. He's dead and she'd watched it.

But when he glances over to her, doing a double take at the troubled look on her face, she finds she's stuck, distant sounds of his pain like a broken record in her mind.

"Joel," she chokes, just to say it, and he hums in his gravely voice, like they haven't talked in a minute.

"You alright, kiddo?" His eyebrows come together just slightly when he says it, the corners of his eyes creasing just so in a way that she knows he's worried about her.

She nods, eyes stinging. She blinks hard, finally pulling her eyes from his face and she feels like she can breathe a little better. He shifts, standing with a groan, sets the guitar against the small table between them with a hollow noise. He puts a comforting hand on her shoulder and she breaks.

She feels like his hand is tearing her apart, the warmth of it seeping into her through her clothes until she can feel it in her bones where it rests gently, just as he always was with her. She wants to get away, wants to run back into the gray and wet of Seattle just to put some distance between her and the weight in her gut, on her shoulders. Instead she stands and pitches forward, arms coming up to wrap around his torso so she can dig her fingers into his worn flannel.

"Woah there, Ellie," he says softly, setting a hand on her head, wrapping the other around her back to hold her close, "you're alright."

She's dizzy, crushing her nose painfully into his chest just to get closer. She thinks she'd like to crawl right inside his chest, curl up under his ribcage and settle with his heart and his lungs, knows his thick skin and strong bones would keep her safe from everything this ugly world throws at her.

But she can't, and so she settles for holding him tighter, tears finally coming as she feels his stout fingers brush through the fringe that's lose from her hairtie.

"I'm sorry," she sobs into his chest, shoulders shaking with the force of her cries. "I couldn't- I couldn't save you, I was there and I couldn't save you." Joel gives her a soft hum and holds her tighter.

"You don't have to do this," he says into her scalp. "I don't want this from you."

The bile returns to her throat and she pushes further into his chest and shakes her head. She knows, she knows, he would tell her to give it up, he'd tell her to be strong and to push through it, to heal and forgive and get better.

But she is not strong. She is, for all of her nineteen years of live in this shithole, still that fourteen year old that Joel and scooped up in his calloused hands and held to his chest. Holding her ankles to boost her to a higher place, setting a hand on shoulder and wrist while her arms shake under the weight of a rifle, steadying her by a grip on her leg while she keeps her balance on a rotten chunk of wood. And how he is holding her together still, hand in her hair and on her back, keeping her close and shielding her from the sun, surrounding her in coffee grounds and love.

She doesn't want to talk about it, wants to bask in this dreamworld where Joel is okay, alive and breathing and in one piece, instead of 6 feet under, skull caved in and skin split over his bones. She doesn't want to remember how her gut and feet ache, how her fingernails are caked in revenge-drawn blood.

"I miss you," she confesses, a wet, broken thing, caught in the rough fabric of his shirt.

"I know, baby girl, I know," he says, rubbing her back.

When she wakes, her shoulder aches and she can still feel gentle hands in her hair. She curls up into herself, further into the grime and cold tile. She has to finish this, is too far in and she has to catch up to Tommy. She knows this, and yet it hurts, settles into her bones like an old wound pulsing with the promise of rain and drags her into the ground.

**Author's Note:**

> i just think they should have touched more on the idea that what ellie was doing was Wrong and joel, at the end of the day, wouldnt have wanted her digging her own grave for him


End file.
